


Cold

by f0rever15elf



Series: The Seamstress [4]
Category: The Great Wall (2017)
Genre: F/M, Pedro Pascal - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-18 19:29:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28997529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/f0rever15elf/pseuds/f0rever15elf
Summary: Pero reminisces on how he made his way to his seamstress.
Relationships: Pero Tovar/Reader, Pero Tovar/You
Series: The Seamstress [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1976128
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	Cold

**Author's Note:**

> Day 17's prompt of the December Writing Challenge series that I completed.

Pero Tovar is no stranger to the cold. Far too many times he has found himself huddled under his cloak as the snow settles over him. He’s sat beneath the cliff’s edge, soaked to the bone without a fire and ridden against biting winds until he could no longer feel his face. It’s never easy, always miserable, and the threat of dying is always very real. But the mercenary Pero Tovar is far too stubborn to have the cold be what does him in. The worst cold, however, was not the occasional night of biting cold, or the frigid water soaking him through. No, the worst nights were the clear, peaceful nights where he lay alone as the crisp night air settled around him. By all accounts, they shouldn’t be that bad, but when one is cold, yet still warm enough to focus on things other than trying not to freeze to death, one’s mind tends to wander. It was then that Pero realized how alone he was, heart gripped in solitude’s frozen hand.

The cold taught him to value the warmth, when he gets it. The warm tavern bed or the fire he’s able to start. The warm stew that he occasionally gets to partake in, and the occasional comfort of the warm flesh of a woman against his own. He cherished it all, thought of it when the cold began to settle into his bones. It worked to ward off the more biting nights, but on those cold nights that just weren’t cold enough, there was little to soothe his heart.

That is, until the day he met a very pretty seamstress. Her smile was bright and her hearth was warm to match the stew she readily fed him. She cared for him, providing him and William with provisions and new clothes, and for a moment, his soul was warm again. Something to ward off the cold on those lonely nights.

He thought of her often, this seamstress. Though the time spent with her was short, it was unforgettable. No one had shown Pero such intimate kindness in a very long time, most too scared off by the scar that split his brow. But she only smiled at him, treated him like a real person and not a monster. And he missed her. 

The next time he saw her, the cold had set in as winter came through. The windows of her cottage glowed with the light of her hearth, and she sat before it with pelts in her lap. He watched her from her doorway for a long moment as she worked, swearing every time the needle pricked her hand. “Such a pretty mouth to be saying such filthy words,” he had grumbled from where he leaned against the door jam after a particularly profane string of swears slipped past her lips. When she saw him, she smiled, and the cold around his heart cracked and splintered. He had never had someone look at him with such warmth before. Never before had he felt so welcome.

She cared for him again that night, feeding him her warm stew much the same as she did that first time he met her, and that night, he opened her home to him. The way she clasped his hand as they sat before the fire sent his heart into a sprint as not even the thrill of battle did. She praised him, fawned over him, and when she learned he was intending on sleeping by his horse, she would hear nothing of it, refusing to let him sleep in the cold. The furs she provided him that night were so warm, any inn he could have stayed at paled in comparison. Come morning, his heart longed to stay, but his job demanded he move on, and she understood this. Her parting gift to him was the fur coat she had sewn that night of beautiful fox pelts, and he kept it with him always, his little reminder of her.

His time away from her this time was longer than he could have ever wanted. Two nights was too long, in his mind, never mind the two years he and William spent traveling for this wild goose chase of a mission. It was agony and anguish and all he had to remember her by were the sound of your laugh and the cloak of pelts. Every night he slept with that cloak, even on the warm nights. It was his shield, his barrier against the cold of loneliness that threatened to wrap its icy grip around his heart once more. He liked to imagine it was her wrapped around him, holding him to ward off the cold. One day, he would return to her. This is the promise Pero Tovar made himself. He would feel her warmth again.

What he saw upon his return this time startled him, seeing her standing there with a babe in her arms, so natural it must surely be hers. He knew two years was too long to wait, and looking at her now he knew his chance at happiness has slipped through his fingers. Pero was many things, but a dishonest man in the realm of married women was not one of them. She had moved on, and he would accept that. “You… are a mother….” His voice was heavy, laden with his heartbreak. He turned to walk away, to move on, but she ran after him.

“She’s not mine!” she had screamed at him, desperation in her voice and he froze in tentative hope, listening to her. The babe, she explained, was her friend Mary’s. It was then that Pero look at the babe, seeing the spitting image of his traveling companion staring back at him.

“ _Aye d_ _íos mio….”_

William came with Mary shortly after, reclaiming their daughter from her and she ushered him into her home once more. The warmth of familiarity and comfort surrounded him as she explained the years he had been away. She moved in a way that screamed agitation, not unlike the way his horse danced when she was nervous and it got to a point where he couldn’t take it anymore, grabbing her wrist to beg for the truth. “Tell me honestly… Is there another to whom you belong? Speak only the truth for my heart cannot bear anything else.”

“There is no one else, Tovar.” The words poured from her lips like a siren’s song. He had a chance. He had a chance to ward off the cold once and for all here with her, by her hearth.

“You waited for me? With no knowledge of if I would return?” How fate smiled on him when she told him of the longing she felt for him, how she prayed for his safe return. The same cold that gripped his heart gripped hers on those nights that just weren’t cold enough. And so he gave her his name. It sounded sweeter than any nectar on her lips and suddenly he found himself begging her to tell him she wanted him to stay. Words he needed to hear from her lips, and when she said them, that last bit of cold around his heart melted away as he held her in his arms. Her warmth flowed through his whole being and he was home.

The cold still comes as fall turns to winter, but it never again touches Pero Tovar. He watches as the snow falls on his first winter under your roof, thinking, reminiscing on how he made his way to this cottage he now calls home, with the woman he now calls his. “One would think you a statue,” you chide playfully, coming up to wrap your arms around his waist. “Your mind wanders. Where does it go?”

He grunts in affirmation before looking down to you with a small smirk, his own arm wrapping around you to pull you close. “The world is cold, _amor_. Before I met you, I was no stranger to it. But before you, the nights were near unbearable. Your warmth is stronger than the brightest of fires.” He takes your hand, bringing it to his lips to kiss your knuckles with such tenderness. “You have kept me warm from the day I met you. I will never again know what it is to be cold.” You smile up at him with such loving tenderness in your eyes, and Pero’s heart swells with his adoration for you.

Pero Tovar is no stranger to the cold, but with you here at his side, the cold could not touch him. 


End file.
